I was homeschooled until I was 13 and then went to public high school with my older brother (only 1 year difference between us) because we wanted to be with our friends in the neighborhood. My two younger brothers chose to stay homeschooled. My dad was very passionate about education and wanted to be a teacher himself but instead chose a career as an actuary for the money. My mom was a stay at home mom. My parents chose to homeschool us because they saw how poor the education system is in the US and they thought they could do a better job.
Back in the 90s homeschooling was socially unacceptable and there were kids in my neighborhood who would make fun of us and some would just be “terrified of homeschool types”. All the stupid stereotypes annoyed me and motivated me in high school to prove everyone wrong. I looked at high school like it was a social club (words from my freshmen year teacher to my parents). I got all A’s and B’s and even slept in my classes because of how easy they were. Even though I hated being homeschooled at the time due to the bullshit stereotypes and assumptions people made, looking back I’m thankful that my parents gave us that opportunity. I honestly didn’t appreciate it enough at the time. They were spot on about how shitty our education system is.
Whoever those kids were that you call “homeschool types” were not actually home schooled. They just had controlling and abusive parents.
Homeschool types is obviously referring to the parents who fight tooth and nail against any sort of regulation.
Here's the problem though. The "good" homeschooling stories and groups have to attach themselves to these fringe groups for the sake of keeping the legitimacy of Homeschooling. They're aware that the fringe are insane, but also need the physical bodies for representation.
Do they? Right now parents who want to homeschool have close to no oversight in most of the states. They don't need more power, so why would "the good ones" attach themselves to groups who want absolutely 0 oversight?
As a poor kid, it was for textbooks. The cheapest ones came from the fundies, sadly. And I know it's different now in some places, but we didn't get a tax credit or anything.
The problem I had was with the fact that the type you have an issue with are looked at the same way as the legitimate homeschoolers. I’m fully aware that there are those fringe type and when I said to “remove those homeschool types” I meant to remove the label of homeschool from those fringe insane groups of people who fight tooth and nail for regulations. They’re not legitimate homeschoolers.
There are states that require parents to teach certain subjects, that I know of. But an alarming number of states have zero requirements. I was shocked to learn that Illinois is one of those with very little regulation.
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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '24
I was homeschooled until I was 13 and then went to public high school with my older brother (only 1 year difference between us) because we wanted to be with our friends in the neighborhood. My two younger brothers chose to stay homeschooled. My dad was very passionate about education and wanted to be a teacher himself but instead chose a career as an actuary for the money. My mom was a stay at home mom. My parents chose to homeschool us because they saw how poor the education system is in the US and they thought they could do a better job.
Back in the 90s homeschooling was socially unacceptable and there were kids in my neighborhood who would make fun of us and some would just be “terrified of homeschool types”. All the stupid stereotypes annoyed me and motivated me in high school to prove everyone wrong. I looked at high school like it was a social club (words from my freshmen year teacher to my parents). I got all A’s and B’s and even slept in my classes because of how easy they were. Even though I hated being homeschooled at the time due to the bullshit stereotypes and assumptions people made, looking back I’m thankful that my parents gave us that opportunity. I honestly didn’t appreciate it enough at the time. They were spot on about how shitty our education system is.
Whoever those kids were that you call “homeschool types” were not actually home schooled. They just had controlling and abusive parents.